Liuxuesheng in Europe: mobility and cultural production

The movement of individuals from China to Europe to study art embodies a significant cultural exchange that has contributed to shaping both Chinese and European cultural landscapes. The mobility of people, ideas, and artistic objects between these two regions has encouraged the interplay of influences, interpretations, and re-contextualizations throughout time. In this article, we do not focus primarily on the mobility of ideas and objects, but rather on body mobilities, as the mobility of people represents one of the most influential ways in which said objects and ideas have come into contact in the history of China–Italy cultural exchange. For analytical purposes, we have chosen to concentrate our attention on people who moved from China to Europe to study art—highlighting the importance of a specific flow of liuxuesheng 留学生 (students abroad) that, as we will see, has emerged with its specificities at the beginning of the 20th century and has increased in recent times, shaped by the evolution of the socio-cultural involvement between the two regions.